Unexpected
by Kalira69
Summary: Lance is used to Kuro being around by now, really he is - it's just that you can never be prepared for some things. (Kuro/Keith. Written for Voltron Fluff Week 2017. Day 5: Sweets/Midnight Snacks.)


Written for Day 5 of Voltron Fluff Week - prompt: Sweets/Midnight Snacks. This is sort of both.

Someone challenged me to include Kuro in one of my Fluff Week stories. That someone was me. By accident.

* * *

Lance rubbed his face as he crept into the kitchen. He was glad of the constant low light of the Castle at night - the dim blue glow was enough to navigate by, and he was really too sleepy for the too-bright main lights.

He yawned and headed for the cupboard, vaguely trying to remember what was still in there that could be snacked on easily in the middle of the night. Something - something much bigger than a space mouse - moved, just as he reached for the door of the cupboard, and Lance _might_ have screamed. A little.

The big, broad shape turned towards him and-

"Don't eat me!" Lance yelped, which he probably wouldn't have if he'd been more awake, but his brain wasn't a hundred percent online and he'd been thinking about their last planetary field trip.

It took him a few panicked breaths of pressing back against the counter before _glowing yellow eyes_ and _wicked grin of gleaming sharp teeth_ made sense in his head.

Kuro leaned _way_ into Lance's personal space as he took a shaky breath.

Big yellow eyes blinked, the heavy brows above lowering and giving him a quizzical look. "Why would I eat you?" Kuro asked, lips pursing in a thoughtful pout as he leaned closer, sniffing - _creepily_ , like _everything Kuro did_ had been for a while - at Lance. "Are you delicious?"

"Nope!" Lance said instantly, quashing his instinctive reaction towards innuendo. "Not delicious at all! Not me!"

Kuro snickered, which was a _bizarre_ sound to hear coming from what was so nearly Shiro's face. "Wasn't planning to eat you." he said as he pulled back, flipping something in his hand that Lance recognised as a bar of the almost-but-not-quite chocolate they'd picked up at the last open market they'd found. "But . . . noted. I'll make sure to have a sweet chaser standing by if I ever do." He grinned again, big and sharp, weirdly playful almost, and then backed away and left the kitchen to Lance.

Lance shuddered as the last words sank in. _So creepy_. With the alarming shock he'd had - okay, so Lance hadn't turned on the light to rummage for a snack _either_ , but his eyes didn't _glow in the dark_ and he understood personal space at _least_ eighty percent of the time. Sixty maybe. Hunk's chart had been confusing and Lance had gotten lost. It might be outdated now anyway, Hunk had made it back at the Garrison, after finals week when everyone was faintly crazy.

Lance shook his head and grabbed something vaguely granola-bar-like from the cupboard before leaving the kitchen himself and heading back to his room. He frowned slightly as he realised that Kuro was down _his_ hallway.

Kuro's room - and hadn't explaining that concept to him been sadly complex; here is a private, personal space of your own, just yours - was not just down the hall from Lance's own, it was almost halfway across the Castle. What was he doing-

Kuro turned, caught Lance's look, and grinned again, with a wink of one big yellow eye. Then he disappeared.

Into Keith's room, Lance realised.

Lance hesitated, resisting the urge to go and check that Keith was all right. Kuro was often strange - or even creepy - but he wasn't . . . dangerous. Well, not to any of _them_. Tapping the panel to open his own door, Lance shuddered at the memory of Kuro ripping bloodily through an entire squad of Galra with his bare hands - both the clawed Galra metal and the nearly-human-looking one - to get to Shiro, badly-injured and only half conscious.

The worst had been that even when they were all dead, blood dripping from Kuro's curled fingers and splattered across his face - even soaked, in thick streaks of ruddy purple-brown, into his white forelock - he had been grinning, wide and crazed and sharp.

Lance still wasn't sure if it had been an actually happy expression or if it was some kind of learned response to fighting for his life from being trapped among the Galra, but either way it had been horrifying.

Lance flopped on his bed and stretched, shaking his head to try and dismiss the memory. Mostly Kuro was fine; he was playful in the oddest ways, so very - sort of weirdly - _different_ from Shiro, and once he'd settled into being part of their team - their family. . .

Well, he'd become a wild, unpredictable, yet awkward, sort of . . . older brother, Lance supposed. Really, if anything, Kuro could be even more protective of the rest of them than Shiro.

And Lance tended to think it wasn't his fault he was creepy sometimes, which . . . he didn't seem to be entirely aware of anyway.

* * *

Lance paused just inside the lounge doorway. Hunk bumped into his back, and he hurriedly continued, moving out of his friend's way. As he did, he had to look around again, confirming for himself that reality _did_ seem to be in place as was otherwise normal.

It was.

It wasn't even unusual for Kuro to be stretched - or sprawled - out over one of the couches for an evening, really. Not once they'd explained about the idea of relaxing, which he had taken to with a kind of devoted hedonism that Lance had to admire.

But right now Kuro was lounging with his head in Keith's lap, glowing eyes mostly closed as he looked up with a . . . kind of soppily dumb expression. Keith had one hand in his hair, petting rhythmically, and occasionally offered him bites from the bowl of purple sweets beside them. And, Lance realised as he inched closer, the dull rumble he'd heard from the door was Kuro.

He was _purring_. Like a very large and very mean housecat.

Lance tried to remember if he'd known Kuro could purr as he approached the couch, but he was pretty sure that was new information.

Keith's fingers dipped down to scratch through the shorter undercut in Kuro's hair and he bared his teeth, the sound getting louder as his body tensed. He stretched, arching and pushing his head into Keith's belly. Keith only smiled, bringing his free hand up to toy with Kuro's forelock, fluffing it over his brow.

Amazingly, Kuro did seem to be happy with the situation. Delighted, really. He kept purring and his clawed fingers flexed lazily alongside Keith's thigh as he snuggled closer. Lance wondered when the creepy not-Shiro they'd picked up had blown straight past 'friend' and turned into . . . what, almost some crazed kind of pet to Keith? Instead of a barely-not-threatening, darkly looming, grinning presence.

Then he wondered what Shiro's reaction would be if he walked in to find Kuro lolling around in Keith's lap hoping for more scritches, and had to swallow back laughter as he dropped onto the couch near Pidge.

* * *

If you've seen the dumb-in-love face kitties can make, yes, that's the face Kuro is making at Keith. (I'm calling this pairing Kureith, because I haven't seen a 'shipname for them yet and that one sounds best of the options to me.)


End file.
